


a primary walks into a bar...

by deandratb



Category: 12 Monkeys (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28025994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deandratb/pseuds/deandratb
Summary: Jennifer knows that in their new reality, Deacon won't remember who they were. But that doesn't stop her from visiting Brothers Deacon. Or from hoping.
Relationships: Deacon/Jennifer Goines
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	a primary walks into a bar...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BoaJones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BoaJones/gifts).



> Since I had this one *almost* ready to go and coincidentally found out about a birthday, happy birthday to @schlotzshewrote! :)

_What was a Primary, once Time wasn’t broken anymore?_

Jennifer could still see it, see it all: how things fit together, how they should run. But now things ran as they should. Parallel tracks, a train she didn’t have to fall in front of. Time didn’t need her, to hold itself together or to make sense.

Nobody needed her, now that the world was saved.

When Time rewound and she waited on that beach for Cole, salt in the air and her lungs, sun making it stick to her skin...most of her was just grateful she could finally rest. Take a breath on the beach. Close her eyes against the sun. Feel what Time was like when it didn’t need her so much. 

She was free. 

Freedom was lonely. 

People who couldn’t see Time’s motions, those people were leading singular ordinary lives. Though she could visit Cassie and Cole in their happy after, it wasn’t her life to share.

And the small part of Jennifer that missed Deacon, a man who was now a boy who didn’t know her, again--she could live with that part. She could console that part the way she consoled her lonely Daughters when they needed it. _This mood will pass, you are better off as you are, everything is as it should be._

So she waited. 

She lived her life.

_Jennifer Goines--genius CEO girlboss--had better things to do than spend decades wishing for a reunion with one guy._

She monitored his budding business because she had time to spare, Jennifer told herself. Not because she wanted to see him. Certainly not because she needed to. _That cat dying of curiosity was an awfully convenient explanation anyway._

But the need was there. Ignoring it didn’t lessen it--made it worse, in fact. A new voice in her head, one that didn’t sound like her at all, but also not like a Primary calling out across time. 

Just a voice inside, saying, _go to him._ Saying, _it doesn’t matter if he can’t see it, if he doesn’t know you now._

_Go, and there you’ll find home._

************************************

“Forget or remember?”

Jennifer blinked. Time kept on ticking. 

“What?”

It was Deacon asking, and she’d heard him, but her mind had been elsewhere before he spoke. Other than taking her order when she sat down at the bar, he hadn’t spoken to her all night.

Not like she expected him to; not like she was there at Brothers Deacon waiting for long heart-to-hearts with a guy who didn’t know her.

 _We saved the world together,_ she thought whenever he looked her way. Sometimes she yelled it internally, raising a voice only she could hear. _We saved them all, together, you were there! And now you don’t even know my name._

“Are you drinking to forget, or to remember?” Deacon tried again, more slowly. “I like to ask. I always wonder.”

It was a slow Tuesday evening, which might explain his stab at conversation. Maybe he was curious because she’d come in every night that week--staking her claim as a new regular. _An irregular regular,_ she thought with a snort. 

The other days, he’d left her alone, letting her people-watch and laugh at her own jokes. But now, he noticed her, turning her world around just like he did the first time. 

He was the only one who ever had, who saw her as a person-not-Primary and deemed her worthy of notice. _In another life,_ Jennifer reminded herself, tugging her focus back to this one. 

“Do people drink to remember?” She considered that concept. Not one she’d thought about before, but it sounded plausible. Like the first time she saw a unicorn and thought, _I believe it. If that’s not real it should be._ Then, of course, it was. _Good times._

Deacon offered her an easy grin, relaxed against the bar like they had all the time in the world for a philosophical discussion. There was an intimacy to it that Jennifer wanted to believe came from experience--that some piece of Deacon was linked to some piece of her, no matter what Time had to say about it. 

“Sure they do. Haven’t you ever missed somebody?” 

“Yes.” _You,_ she told him with her eyes. His were mirrors reflecting back; she couldn’t tell if the reflection was one-way. _Wrong room for an interrogation. Even worse for ballet._

She had taken ballet classes as a little girl--Mother’s idea, of course. _The funhouse mirrors never blinked, always staring, staring with their watchful eyes._ Jennifer switched to tap.

“Well, I can tell you, as a proprietor of this fine establishment, lots of people find it a little bit easier...a little less painful...to lubricate the process. You want to forget the past, you get blind drunk until you can barely stumble home from here. You want to remember it, you nurse rounds slowly; you savor.”

Deacon grinned at her again, that slice of a smile she could feel down to her toes. “I keep myself entertained when it’s not busy, trying to guess which customers are which. Most people are easy, but you--I’m still trying to figure it out.”

She laughed. “Easy is definitely not a word that’s often applied to me.”

All the words that had been still lived inside her like brands, burning hot and painful even then. _Murderer. Crazy. Fool._ Once upon a time he gave her better ones, ones that sparkled. _Sorry. Purpose. Take it._

Deacon didn’t know that, though. She could keep his words in her pockets like gifts but he was not the giver. Jennifer shook her head, cleared it of the past-future. _Never was, in this reality._

“Wanna give me a hint?” Theodore of the Brothers Deacon asked, shifting closer so his elbows were resting on the clean bar. 

Call it wishful thinking-- _wouldn’t be the first time, she remembered a pair of otter eyes and a head full of lies--_ but it almost felt flirtatious, the way he was looking at her and waiting to see what she said.

The tragedy of time was that when they were walking parallel lines, he just kept dying--and now that the world was saved, her line was thirty years too late. _Didn’t mean she couldn’t have a little fun,_ Jennifer decided. _If Deacon had a thing for older women, who was she to argue?_

So she curled her fingers into her palms, roots into the earth grounding her where she sat, and told the truth. Wrapped her lips around the words like Jennifer would wrap herself around Deacon again, if she could go back. _Time is a snake that only moves forward; no going back, not anymore._

“I don’t want to forget the past.” She tried to press meaning into every syllable, tried to gift him their history in code, if only it were possible. “I want to **keep** the past.”

He nodded, still leaned in close, like he actually cared about what she had to say. _Excellent customer service_. _Five stars, above and beyond._

“But I’m not here to remember it, either. I don’t need a bar, or a drink, for that.” Jennifer grinned at him, the unbalanced scales of her smile a contrast to the sharp edges of his. “I just wish I could do it over again.”

“Don’t we all.” He glanced at the door when the bell above it rang. A new customer, somebody else to focus on, to cater to. _He was good at this,_ Jennifer thought, the way she had every night she visited. _It suited him, this destiny, the one he was always meant to have._

Just sucked that hers was meant to be so separate from his.

“But I guess until somebody invents time travel, we’re all stuck with the lives we’ve got, huh?” Deacon asked, and Jennifer’s eyes snapped to his, searching. 

_Too good to be true, too easy to hope._ Somewhere in there, she wanted to see the man she used to believe in, the one she believed loved her a little.

_A little was everything, compared to what she’d had before._

So Jennifer knew better than to believe her lying hopeful heart, coming here to drink and pass the hours and cross her fingers in case today was the day time unfurled again and they’d have to team back up to fix it.

Cole and Cassie were out of the pool, they got their happy future and it was where Time needed them to stay...so if anybody was gonna be called to new adventures, it might as well be her. And if anything else was going to be asked of her, there was no one she would trust by her side more than Deacon.

 _Excuses, really._ It’d been thirty years, and Time was still ticking along, no hiccups. 

And while those two had landed a little bit outside of Time, just enough to remember what happened, most people only seemed to have room for one reality in their heads. Nothing felt more lonely than being Primary in a world where Jones and Hannah didn’t know her...except maybe being Primary in this bar, missing Deacon while he was three feet away.

“Yep,” she told him with a hollow laugh. It was just a coincidence, his comment. _She could find needles anywhere with a big enough magnet. What did that prove to the haystack?_ “I guess we’re all stuck.”

He was already shifting his weight in the direction of the guy who came through the door, ready to move on to other business, but Deacon paused long enough to aim that smile at her a final time.

“How about the next round’s on me.” _Well, now._ He’d certainly never done that before, offered to pay for her beer.

 _First time for everything,_ she thought, wondering what had gotten into him that made the day different from other days. _Frequent drinker program nobody told her about?_ Whatever it was, she wasn’t going to complain. 

Deacon passed the drink to her before crossing to the other side of the bar, tossing his last words over his shoulder--she could barely hear them above the music that filled the space. _In every reality, he was still stuck in the 80s._

“Let me know if you need me for anything else, ma’am.”

A part of her bristled at the end of that sentence, annoyed by the way strangers treated her these days with extra years sketched on her face. _Everybody likes a good chicken, until it clucks for itself._

She couldn’t take it personally coming from him, though, Jennifer decided. After all, Deacon called her ma’am when she was his own age, when he barely knew her yet.

_Wait._

Something about his use of the word, the glint in his eyes, the ease of his handing her a pint. It tripped that fucking hope again, and she couldn’t help it, her eyes followed him as he worked down the other end of the bar.

Taking folded bills from the new guy, pouring him a shot, then another. Polishing a glass while New Guy knocked them back, nodding when he held up a finger.

Deacon served the only other person sitting in front of him, and Jennifer wondered how long it would take for him to head back in her direction. _Would she be able to see it, if there was something in his eyes? Was there any difference in the way he carried himself, now that he wasn’t carrying a lifetime of scars?_

Her head was a magic eight ball brimming with questions, like always. _Shake it, you get answers. Or ask again later, seventeen times in a row ‘til you want to smash it against the wall and make the truth come out._

From her vantage point on the stool she couldn’t make guesses about his eyes, and he moved like always--coiled energy, potential for danger. Indoors in winter, nobody but Deacon could list his own scars.

New Guy was talking to him about a football game, and Deacon was making engaged listening noises, though it was obvious he didn’t really care.

 _She should have known better, of course,_ Jennifer scolded herself later. _Time wasted looking for hints, subtle traces._ Of all the things Theodore Deacon is-was-will-forever-be, subtle never made it onto the list. 

His customer was a quick drunk-- _looking to forget,_ she thought with a twitch of her lips--and he required the barest show of interest. Deacon’s volume grew alongside his, their discussion more spirited, and her eyes were starting to glaze over. 

But Jennifer was still facing their way, and in the end it didn’t matter that she wasn’t actively listening. When it came to Deacon, she was pretty sure she could hear him in a hurricane. 

_She could hear him even when he was silent. He **was** the hurricane._

After he slid New Guy another shot, Deacon glanced Jennifer’s way. His carelessly friendly expression faded, replaced by an unblinking intensity.

The bar wasn’t packed, but it held noise and people enough to entertain her on a slow night. She shouldn’t have been able to sense the room closing in, a narrowing tunnel and a ringing in her ears. 

Among the noise and the oblivious customers, Deacon was staring at her like they were the only two people left on Earth, and Jennifer felt the kind of shiver she hadn’t in thirty years, because nobody looked at her that way anymore. 

_Nobody else ever had, swallowing hard across a table like his words were bees that would sting them both if they escaped. Jennifer wasn’t allergic to bees; she still wondered what they might have spelled out in the sky if he’d let them fly._

Sometimes after Time took what it was owed, it gave a little something back. She’d assumed that gift was reserved for Cole alone, but maybe Time had generosity left for its favorite cog in the wheel. Maybe it took pity on her fall from Primary grace to ordinary human living on a barstool. 

_The reason didn’t really matter, did it? Not when the horse was there, to keep its mouth closed and unexamined?_

Sometimes, Jennifer remembered as Deacon’s eyes stayed on hers, Time understood that it owed you, too. 

She’d already set her drink down, knew her mouth was gaping a little, didn’t care if she looked like a moron. Deacon tipped back his own beer before he smiled at her again, and she let the shiver repeat, run through her. 

_Maybe hope wasn’t dead, a man on his knees in a crowd filled with blades. Maybe hope had been hibernating._

Deacon pointed at her beer, raised his eyebrows like he was asking if she wanted another, and she nodded, answering whatever question might’ve been buried beneath that one.

He took his time getting to her with it, dusting off a shelf and straightening a handful of vodka bottles along the way.

“Here you go,” he said when he arrived, the click of his tongue a punctuation mark and a memory. 

Deacon set the fresh beer down in front of her, leaned against the back wall of his bar, and winked.


End file.
